Pat DollardTUCSON – A park employee left for dead at the Chiracahua National Monument nine months ago, speaks out about her attack.
Karen Gonzales, 60, was viciously beaten in broad daylight in one of the park restrooms.
She suffered a brain injury and is now walking with a limp. She tells News 4 Crime Trackers, “I will never forget his face coming at me.”
Gonzales was cleaning the women’s restroom at the Faraway Ranch Campground when she heard a noise, looked up, and saw her attacker come at her with a rock.
The DNA evidence left behind tied 33-year-old Gilbert Gaxiola as her attacker. The Cochise Country Sheriff’s department confirms Gaxiola is an undocumented immigrant.
According to Cochise Co. Sheriff’s investigators, Gaxiola hit her so hard, it broke the rock.
The Sergeant told her, he not only hit her with a rock but he slammed her up against the metal door.
Evidence of the dent remains on the door. Gonzales says her hands are still recovering from the injuries. “Maybe some of it was fending off the blows, I don’t know. But I know I hit him.” She says she also chased after Gaxiola.
During the attack, she says she heard her husband Bob’s voice. Bob had just died two weeks before. They’d been married 34 years.
She remembers him saying “Oh dude, that rock is not big enough. You don’t know how tough this woman is. Oh yeah, you’ll knock her out and that’s just temporary then she’s going to wake up she’s going to realize who did this too her and then she’s going beat the ?$#@ out of you.”
Detectives say Gaxiola dragged her back into the restroom, and then stole her truck. He was seen in surveillance video going through the drive-thru of two fast food restaurants, and a going to WalMart. “He stole my truck to get back to Douglas and he was caught the very next day with a drug load.”
Detectives say he abandoned the truck in Douglas. Border Patrol agents arrested him for drug smuggling the next day.
Besides the scenic rock formations of the Chiricahua National Monument the hiking trails are also used by drug smugglers. In the peaks, drug cartels place lookouts to warn of Border Patrol activity. “I had a gut feeling when I was up at the bone yard that someone was watching me, and he was.”
At the same time, Gonzales believes she had people watching out for her as well. “I believe that when this guy did this to me my late son was here my late husband was here and Silas Cochise.”
Silas was the great grandson of Cochise the chief of the Chiricahua Apaches. He was also a friend of hers. “It’s pretty amazing I survived. It makes me think that there is something else I have to do with my life. I’m still around for a reason. ”
One of those reasons, she was there to hold her mother’s hand when she passed just a few weeks ago. But it hasn’t been easy, she’s had her struggles. She said her son told her one morning, “Mom, I just wish one day you’d wake up and be glad you are alive. I started crying and I said me too, me too. But now I am, so I made it, I made it.”
Gilbert Gaxiola is charged with attempted first and second degree murder, armed robbery, three counts of aggravated assault kidnapping, and auto theft. He goes to trial this summer.
Gonzales continues to recuperate and credits the love from her friends and family for helping her through this ordeal.
Read more at http://patdollard.com/2014/05/undocumented-immigrant-viciously-beats-park-employee-with-a-rock/#cFd5kAexJU5cyjB8.99
and these are the type they are allowing to be set loose on our streets all 36,000 of them
all the wile trying to criminalize our right to weapons to protect ourselves ..
King Ø is an America hater. How this is not widely known & understood is laughable.
Obama and his admin are letting thousands per month in….
HOLD THEM RESPONSIBLE.
Just think, if all drugs were legalized this would probobly have not happened.
Also, if all drugs were legalized, most people would never be so infactuated with them and start to use them.
Think of all those who want a hit of cannabis, and hash and will get capped instead.
People don’t know it but mexican mafia has books with photos to hit ppl.
Gee a stupid ass BORN IN USA electronics guy knows this.
What’s going to turn this crap around? I might refuse to work on their Shizness, but your elected officals could give a crap
Goes on trial this summer?? – Say what? – I thought they gave these guys a pass, hot meal, and EBT card – Somebody better straighten this out or they’ll run out of voters – like Tom pointed out: this could play into a pesky 2nd ammendment question, and – those 36,000 they let loose are going to have some questions about this also???
36,000 criminal illegal immigrants who want to come and take back what they think we stole from them and they come and commit crimes go to prison and then along comes our criminal in chief to let them out.
Nice situation we have here. But we could use this situation to get what we want if we take a page from the book those criminals in DC use. Never let a crisis go to waste.
How about declaring our own state of emergency and taking care of this in a way that not only solves the problem but ensures the thought of making all these illegals legal will never be brought up again. I think that within 14 days we could manage to remove illegals, get rid of gangs, no longer have to press one to hear phone messages in english, reduce the prison population, and make our neighbor to the south respect our border much more than they do now. And as a bonus we could let some morons in our gov know their services are no longer needed, wanted or accepted.
What do you think?
I think it sounds good on paper.
But in the REAL world…